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Postings of Integral Cinema Project preliminary research findings can be found here and at Mark Allan Kaplan's Integral Life Integral Cinema Blog. Mark's Integral Life blog has received Integral Life's Editors Choice recognition for two months in a row.

Hollywood is currently in a state of panic. While box office attendance is up, DVD sales have fallen through the floor and the traditional market streams and financial indicators are in a state of flux. To more clearly understand this situation I chose to look at four developmental lines in the social holon of the current American motion picture industry. The four lines I chose are the Techno-Economic Base (T-E), Business/Markets (B/M), Communication/Media (C/M), and Artistic/Aesthetic (A/A) lines of development. I used a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being the lowest level of development and 10 being the highest. These numbers correlate to the first 10 altitudes of consciousness of Ken Wilber’s spectrum of worldviews, with 1 representing Infrared/Archaic and 10 representing Violet/Super-Integral Level 2 (Wilber, Pattern, Leonard, & Morelli, 2008, p. 90).

Reflecting on the current state of the industry, it seems to me that the Techno-Economic Base (T-E) of the industry is shifting from level 6 (Green/Pluralistic/Informational) to level 7 (Teal/Integral Systems/Trans-Informational or Virtual). This shift appears to be driven/co-created by a transition from separate/pluralistic media technologies and platforms (i.e.: Movies, TV, Gaming, Web, etc.) to more integrated, cross-media, and virtual technologies and platforms (i.e.: Material delivered/integrated across multiple convergent, immersive, and embedded mediums), represented by a shift from level 6 to level 7 in the Communication/Media (C/M) developmental line. As the nature of the medium is shifting, cinematic media artists are embracing these advances as a means to expand their artistic expression across these multiple platform environments. This in turn is shifting the Artistic/Aesthetic (A/A) line from level 6 to level 7 as well. While these three lines appear to be shifting in tandem, it also appears that the Business/Markets (B/M) line is stuck at level 5 (Orange/Rational), as the industry’s business community frantically tries to apply their old models of finance, distribution, and marketing to the emerging new techno-creative-communication environment (see chart below).

There are indicators of some potential shifts in the Business/Markets (B/M) line, including a major restructuring of Disney’s studio model to meet the changing media environment and the release of James Cameron’s Avatar, which appears to be attempting to cross the integral media threshold by offering content immersion (IMAX 3D), platform convergence (Theatrical/Game simultaneous release), and a foray into virtual aperspectivalism (Character-to-Avatar perspective shifts). It should be interesting to see if these forays will be part of a vertical rather than horizontal change. Either way, I believe the industry is poised at the edge of a tipping point between the relativistic/information age and the approaching integral/virtual age. Only time will tell if the American film industry will cross this threshold through a single major shift, or several smaller transitions, or a combination of both major and minor shifts, or if it will be a turbulent or peaceful transition. Since several members of the industry have already begun downloading the Integral Operating System (IOS) into their consciousness, I think we are in for a wondrous and wild ride.

Types are the variety of consistent styles that arise in various domains and occur irrespective of developmental levels. Types can overlap or be incongruous. As with the other elements, types have expressions in all four quadrants.

In the UL quadrant there are personality types. There are numerous systems that map the number of different personalities, including Keirsey (4 types), Enneagram (9 types), and Myers-Briggs (16 types). In this quadrant there are also the gender types of masculine and feminine. In general, individuals have access to both masculine and feminine qualities and thus tend to have a unique combination of traits associated with each type. In the UR quadrant there are blood types (A, B, AB, O) and William Sheldon’s well-known body types (ectomorph, endomorph, mesomorph). In the LR quadrant there are ecological biome types (e.g., steppe, tundra, islands) and governmental regime types (e.g., communist, democracy, dictatorship, monarchy, republic). In the LL quadrant there are types of religious systems (e.g., monotheism, polytheism, pantheism) and different types of kinship systems (e.g., Eskimo, Hawaiian, Iroquois, Omaha, Sudanese).

In addition to levels and lines there are also various kinds of states associated with each quadrant. States are temporary occurrences of aspects of reality (lasting anywhere from a few seconds to days, and in some cases even months or years). They also tend to be incompatible with each other. For example, you cannot be drunk and sober at the same time, a town cannot experience a blizzard and a heat wave on the same day. Above are a few examples of the kinds of states associated with each quadrant.